Egypt's democrats feeling betrayed

CAIRO — In the heady aftermath of the Iraq invasion, President Bush outlined a bold and ambitious U.S. strategy to democratize the Arab world in which Egypt was expected to play a leading role.

"The great and proud nation of Egypt has shown the way toward peace in the Middle East and now should show the way toward democracy in the Middle East," Bush told the National Endowment for Democracy in November 2003.

A few years later, Egypt instead seems to be leading the region backward by jailing dissenters and opponents and by introducing a slew of constitutional amendments that democracy activists say will herald an end to Egypt's brief experiment with democratic freedoms.

Disappointment with U.S.

As Egypt's government announced Tuesday that 75 percent of voters approved the amendments in Monday's referendum, Egyptian democracy activists said they felt betrayed by a U.S. government that appears to have turned its back on hopes for democracy in the region.

"American policy has decided stability is more important than democracy," said George Ishaq, one of the founding leaders of the opposition Kifaya movement that flourished after Egypt's government appeared to bow to U.S. pressure and permit greater pluralism in 2005. "This is the end for democracy in Egypt."

The amendments will, among other measures, put an end to independent judicial oversight of elections, restrict the formation of political parties and give the government powers to arrest, search and eavesdrop on citizens without a court order -- steps in contradiction to a list of measures outlined by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a speech at the American University of Cairo in 2005 that urged the government to adopt democratic reforms.

Turnout was 27 percent of Egypt's 36 million voters, the government said. Opposition leaders and human-rights groups, however, put the number who showed up at the polls at 3 percent to 5 percent, most of them state employees, and alleged widespread vote rigging and ballot stuffing.

U.S. criticisms of the backsliding on Egypt's reform promises have been relatively mild. In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey called the amendments "something of a missed opportunity to advance reform."

"It is evident that the vast majority of Egyptians chose not to participate in this referendum," he said, noting the discrepancies between the official turnout figure and reports by others of empty polling stations. "As the Middle East is moving forward toward greater openness and pluralism, we do want to see Egypt play a leading role in that process."

On a visit to Egypt last weekend, Rice said that she raised "concerns" with President Hosni Mubarak about the amendments, which Amnesty International has called the greatest threat to freedoms in Egypt since Mubarak came to power in 1981.

Opposition figures who had been galvanized by Rice's earlier encouragements of democratic reform say they wish America would do more to pressure Egypt, which remains one of Washington's closest Arab allies and the biggest beneficiary of U.S. aid after Israel, to the tune of $1.75 billion a year.

Washington's push for democratic reforms in Egypt turned out to be "just words," said Judge Hisham Bastawisi, an outspoken critic of the existing electoral process.

'Turned its back'

"It's not so much that we believed America was genuine about democracy, but there was a belief that U.S. interests happened to coincide with the need for democracy in Egypt," he said. "It's because American interests have now changed that the U.S. has turned its back on reforms, and our government has taken advantage of this."

Hala Mustafa, editor of Democracy magazine, said she does not believe America has lost sight of its dream of a democratic Middle East. But events elsewhere in the region have shifted Washington's focus for now, she said.

Iraq's slide into a chaotic state and fears that the disorder will spill over into the region have pushed the quest for stability to the top of U.S. priorities.

The victory of Hamas in last year's Palestinian elections and the realization that the banned Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood had emerged as the single biggest challenger to Egypt's government after parliamentary elections in 2005 also prompted the U.S. to put on hold its push for democracy in the region, Mustafa said.

Yet although the new constitutional amendments may achieve the government's immediate goal of silencing dissent, in the long term they could prove highly destabilizing, Mustafa said.

"In the short term this will pass, but in the long term the regime will face many challenges because it will have to resort to security measures to keep the status quo, and this is not a solution," she said.

In the meantime, U.S. credibility has been severely damaged, said Ishaq, who says democracy activists will continue to try to challenge the government. "I don't listen to America anymore," he said. "Even if they come up with a concrete plan, I won't listen."